The present invention is intended to be used with the atomizer described in Lohkamp, U.S. Pat. No. 6,550,693, issued on Apr. 22, 2003, and entitled “Coating apparatus and method of use”, which is intended to coat food with a high-viscosity coating prior to further processing. The present invention is an apparatus for distributing the coating from a coating reservoir to the rotating atomizer disks of the prior invention.
Referring now to FIG. 1, the rotating disks 102, 104 of U.S. Pat. No. 6,550,693 are depicted, together with feed tube 180, used to convey coating to the hubs 130 which connect the rotating atomizer disks. This prior art system may be further understood by referring to FIG. 2, which shows the coating 120 projected outward by the centrifugal forces generated by the rotating disks.
As seen in FIG. 2, the feed tube 180 delivers the coating to the low point between the hubs 130, where is will climb the upward-sloping walls of the central hub, reaching the inner surfaces of the rotating disks before being broadcast outward.
This prior art patent describes some other variations of the above-described system.
The apparatus of the present invention replaces the coating distribution system described in the prior art in several ways. First, the present invention does not require separate feed tubes for each pair of rotating disks. And secondly, the present system distributes the coating from the inside of the central hubs, where it is transported directly to the inner surface of the rotating atomizer disks, thereby reducing coating waste resulting from coating broadcast from the outer hub surfaces in the prior art.